I am in Singapore waiting for my flight tomorrow morning onwards to Manado for the Wetpixel Lembeh Workshop. Group leader and workshop instructor Alex Mustard is there already and comments:

And after the welcome to the Resort, the underwater welcome as only Lembeh Strait can do. I got here just in time to night dive, so after 1 dive: 5 frogfish (inc. 2 hairy), stargazer, bobbit worm, coral mimicking nudis (Phyllodesmium rudman/jacobsen and Marionia sp.) loads of mating nudis, crabs and shrimps everywhere, pygmy squid etc etc. It promises to be a very productive stay!

I spent yesterday evening hanging out with David Cheung of Scubacam after picking up some last minute gear that has been provided for testing on the trip:

(David and Sanah at Scubacam)

We plan to provide regular updates on this thread, and to encourage the workshop participants to do the same. Please check back often as the trip progresses!

I have to admit, I am already installed at Lembeh Resort and already having an amazing time.

I'd never done a daytime dive on the house reef in all my previous visits, but I thought I'd check it out before the group starts turning up. We met this little fellow amongst some other rather attractive residents.

Highlight of the house reef was a yellowy rhinopias - and being on our house reef should mean that we're the only ones who'll be shooting him. Although since we're all booked up for boat diving - he's probably not going to get that many visitors. It is nice to know the blue ring is there too - right next to him - but I suspect it will be harder to find reliably.

just a few question / remark on the aperture question regarding uw macro: the rather old "dispute" between maximum depht of field versus diffraction when using smallest apertures like f/32. I guess your picture with the blue ring is likely not more than f/16, thus the ending parts of the animal's body are unsharp.

I recently discussed this question with Kurt Amsler and he believes that the smaller the aperture the better overall the picture since larger depth of field is more pleasing despite maybe a bit less sharp overall on the focus point area -due to diffraction- than with a modest aperture let's say f/11 or f/16.

I recently discussed this question with Kurt Amsler and he believes that the smaller the aperture the better overall the picture since larger depth of field is more pleasing despite maybe a bit less sharp overall on the focus point area -due to diffraction- than with a modest aperture let's say f/11 or f/16.

What is your opinion on this?

I think it depends on the situation. Lembeh sand is arguably the ugliest background in all the world of diving - so our workshop is very much focused on getting rid of it in our photos. I think that the vast majority of photos taken here are little more than snap-shots - not because the subjects are poor, but because of the background is too distracting. And we have to always think to lessen its impact in our photos. There are many ways to do this - framing, lighting, depth of field etc - in fact the gang on the workshop are going to have this beaten into them over 11 nights!

In this situation a more in focus background would definitely distract from the impact of the main subject. And I definitely think it was worth opening up the aperture to blur the background so that the octopus stands out. Even though my choice of a wider aperture has meant that the tip of the octopus is out of focus as a result.

If the octopus had been in mid-water, for example, I would have definitely stopped the lens right down to maximise depth of field, because the subject separation would have been taken care of by the situation.

Since I have woken up early, I will make use of the internet without too much competition to post some of my photos that I have processed so far. These are mainly ones I have processed to use in my talks - as I have spent most of my spare time here so far in meetings with the staff of Lembeh Resort and Critters@Lembeh making sure everything is exactly as I want it for the start of the workshop.

Day 1 of the workshop started with Alex giving a presentation about lens choices after breakfast.

Then it was off on the boats to put it all into practice. We are using 4 boats of which 2 stayed out for 2 dives, while the others returned between dives. Alex gave a talk after lunch giving more hints, this time about strobe and camera settings. Once again, this was followed by the boats departing to put these new lessons into practice!

Some folks elected to go out and do a night dive too!

Lembeh is being really productive! There are fascinating subjects everywhere. In fact, the guides from Critters @ Lembeh were getting tired from having to swim so hard to show us new animals!

Alex delivered a presentation on subject selection after which, we went and selected subjects! His talk ran over, so we rescheduled a session after lunch to allow him to finish.

Everyone has done at least three dives today, and then most folks submitted images for a group image review in the evening. The lessons of the workshop are obviously paying off, as the standard of the submitted images was very high.

I am starting to post images taken by the participants of the workshop. The internet connection here is somewhat limited, so please excuse both the number of images and the somewhat random collation of them....